Recently, during the final performance of his two-year Unstoppable Momentum tour, Satriani had an epiphany; he found himself, "playing the guitar with my teeth an awful lot. I thought, 'Why are you doing this?' It's as if something else, or somebody else, was driving me to do it." Satriani seized upon this moment of self-realization as the springboard and creative center for his alter ego "Shockwave Supernova," the outlandish and extroverted 'performance side' of the normally shy and reserved guitar virtuoso. With this new persona as partner, Satriani launched his wildly ambitious 15th solo album, Shockwave Supernova.